Giving a Voice to the Ancestors

© 2001, 2002 by Emily Allen Garland. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,

recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

ISBN: 1-4033-0333-9 (e-book)

ISBN: 1-4033-0334-7 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-1-4033-0333-2(eBook)

IstBooks-rev. 08/22/03

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Preface

Part One Growing Up in Rural Georgia: Connecting to the Past

Chapter 1   A Curious Child

Chapter 2   Ansacka

Chapter 3   Charity

Chapter 4   The War Years (1861-1865)

Chapter 5   The Emancipation of Charity

Chapter 6   Joshua

Chapter 7   Charity & Joshua

Part Two The Children of Charity and Josh

Chapter 8   Joe

Chapter 9   Katie

Chapter 10 Gertrude

Chapter 11 Sallie

Chapter 12 Tom

Chapter 13 Annie

Chapter 14 Jule

Part Three Papa’s People

Chapter 15 Emily & Berry

Chapter 16 Ephram & Mollie

Chapter 17 Otealia & Jerge

Chapter 18 Lyman & Lou

Chapter 19 George & Katie

Chapter 20 Duke & Pet

Part Four Transitions

Chapter 21 Close Calls in 1941

Chapter 22 Bay Chile Goes to School

Part Five Daddy’s People: the Allens and Dicksons

Chapter 23 Martha and Troup

Chapter 24 Hiram and Rhoda

Chapter 25 Dollie and Lizzie

Chapter 26 Evangeline and Louie

After-word

Works Consulted

Dedication

Dedicated to

My children, Dana Allen Palmer and Suzanne Palmer Bobbitt

And

My grandchildren,

Cheyenne Espiritu Palmer, Allison Espiritu Palmer, Robert AnDrew

Bobbitt and Hope Evangeline Bobbitt

Acknowledgements

I first must acknowledge my grandparents, Tom and Annie Butts, who made my great-grandparents a part of my life even though they had died long before I was born. My grandparents brought them to life by regaling me with stories of the past.

I owe a debt of gratitude to all who contributed to this book. George Gardiner, a descendant of Simon Ingram, generously shared years of research that he had conducted regarding the Fraleys and Ingrams of Hancock County, Georgia. My thanks also to: George McClain, grandson of Berry and Emily Butts, who shared his family memories; Joe Ingram, son of Jule and Laura Ingram, who helped me discover the name of my great-great-grandmother, Ansacka.

My sisters, Elaine Pritchard, Otealia Edwards, and Evelyn Peeler broadened my knowledge of maternal and paternal ancestors. My sister, Otealia, became the family historian and shared a wealth of information. Kimberly Monroe, an editor by profession who is also my great-niece, was a godsend in helping me to shape my efforts into a presentable manuscript. She not only helped with grammar and format, but made excellent suggestions on areas that needed expanding or deleting.

Ester (Retchie) Palmer, my daughter-in-law, shared her considerable computer skills, finding solutions to what seemed to me insurmountable glitches.

My husband, Dr. Norman Garland, has been my supporter and cheerleader from the beginning to the end of this project. He bought two new computers to get me started and bolstered my spirits when they began to sag by referring to me as the author.

My daughter, Suzanne Bobbitt, son, Dana Palmer, son-in-law, Terry Bobbitt, and my brother, Tommy Allen have all been supportive and are eagerly anticipating the release of this book. I thank you all.

December 2001

West Bloomfield, Michigan

Emily Allen Garland

Preface

More than thirty years ago, I started writing a novel based on the lives of my great-grandparents, Charity and Joshua. The novel that I began writing was a romanticized version of the lives of a former slave woman and a white man who had served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. I was extremely busy with graduate school and two children. I also realized that the climate was not right politically for such a book. I put it aside but never forgot it.

One Sunday in March 2000, I drifted off while my minister was preaching a sermon that I had heard many times before. The spirit of Charity came and whispered, When are you going to write the book? I want my story told, but truthfully as it happened.

Then I felt Grandma Martha’s presence. She was my paternal—Cherokee Indian—great-grandmother. She wanted her story told also. By May of 2000, I found myself immersed in a project of research and interviews that compelled me to write the stories of not only Charity & Josh, Martha & Troupe, but of all eight of my great-grandparents and many of their descendants, crossing time from the nineteenth through the twentieth centuries.

During one recent summer, after an extended period of drought, the bed of the O’Conee River in Milledgeville, Georgia turned into dried out red clay. It was hard to believe that for years, and just months before, the O’Conee had flown a swollen, sullen yellow, ebbing to the very top of the banks, and providing enough fish to feed many of the poor black families living along River Hill.

Just when it appeared that the O’Conee had nothing left to give, along came some archaeologists who engaged in a dig of the dry river bed and turned up bones of Cherokee Indians who inhabited the area before they were annihilated by the white man more than a century before. When I heard about that, I wondered how many of those bones belonged to my Cherokee ancestors.

In 1987, I returned to Milledgeville for a high school re-union. Some of the alumni went to a historical cemetery where they found unnamed grave markers in the section reserved for slaves prior to 1865. These graves were easily identifiable by circles representing chains on the headstones. Each chain represented the number of years the slave had served his or her master. I wondered if any of these graves held remains of my African ancestors. I don’t recall seeing or hearing about any artifacts relating to my white ancestors (Irish and English). I wondered why.

Part One

Growing Up in Rural Georgia:

Connecting to the Past

Chapter 1

A Curious Child

On June eleventh 1935, just as the dinner bell rang at high noon calling the farmhands in for their dinner, I came screaming into the world in rural Baldwin County, fifteen miles from Milledgeville, the former capital of Georgia.

My grandfather did not go to the field that day. He and my father had walked the fifteen miles to Milledgeville the night before to get Dr. Boddie when my mother began having labor pains.

It was unusual for the doctor to come all the way to the country to deliver a baby. That was generally left to a midwife. But after what had happened to my parent’s last baby, two years before, they were not taking any chances. My mother, Evangeline, had given birth to a healthy baby boy who was named Howard but always referred to as Little Buddy. The drunken mid-wife who delivered him cut the umbilical cord too short and the baby hemorrhaged to death a few days after birth.

Now my grandfather and father paced nervously, and red eyed, from lack of sleep, in the backyard until they were called inside to greet the new arrival. My grandmother and a farmhand, named Emily Young, whose nickname was Tea, stood on each side of my mother’s bed, looking down lovingly at the new baby cradled in her arms.

Dr. Boddie said to my father as he entered the room, Mr. Allen, you have a fine baby girl. Have you and Mrs. Allen decided on a name yet?

We have agreed to name her Emily, My father said, smiling broadly as he took me from my mother’s arms. He looked at me with pride and pulled back the blanket to examine each tiny finger before returning me to my mother, who added as she gazed lovingly at her new baby, Her middle name will be Pauline in honor of my best friend’s mother, Mrs. Pauline Davis, who was so kind to me when I lived with her while I attended high school in Milledgeville.

Emily (Tea) Young, who had been standing silently by after she called Daddy and Papa into the room, assumed that the baby had been given the first name of Emily in her honor. She now said with obvious pride, I am honored that the baby has been named after me. That gives me the right to nickname her.

Tea, quickly exercised her right by nicknaming me Bay Chile. My parents did not want to hurt her feelings by telling her that I was actually named for my great grandmother, Emily Mason Butts.

####

My first birthday coincided with the end of the school year at the country church school where my mother had been teaching. She left me with my grandparents, Tom and Annie Butts, to join my father, three sisters, and brother in Milledgeville, where they had gone earlier so that my daddy could work and the older children could attend school.

My grandmother asked my mother to leave me with her. She said she would be so lonesome with everyone gone, and it was hard enough for Louie and Evangeline to try to arrange for housing and food for four children. My mother agreed, she later said, to appease my grandmother, who had never had her maternal instincts fully satisfied as she only had one child.

For the first ten years of their marriage, my parents had lived in Washington D.C. returning to Georgia and my mother’s parents in 1932 when the great depression impacted my father’s ability to support the family.

####

Summer days in rural central Georgia could be hot, long, and boring if you were a child living with elderly grandparents and no other children within miles, unless you were curious and had a vivid imagination.

We lived in a three bedroom farmhouse, surrounded by beautiful trees and flowers. My grandmother spent most of her time tending her vegetable and flower gardens. I tagged along behind her to the vegetable garden in the mornings and the flower garden in the afternoons.

I hated working in the vegetable garden, where one of my jobs was to pick the bugs off the plants. The green worms that inched along making little humps as they went were not so bad but the soldier bugs, attired in black and white stripes, scared me. They would roll their mean little eyes and fly right up into my face. I loved the flower garden, where I spent most of my time chasing butterflies. I would watch as they hovered near a beautiful rose, and when they perched on one to savor the rose’s sweet nectar, I would sneak up behind the butterfly and ever so gently pinch its two wings together, holding it in my hand and studying every inch of the lovely creature, until Big Mama called me to resume my task of pulling weeds. I would release the butterfly and watch as it spread its gold and black wings and circled out over the garden, looking for another flower to feed on without being disturbed by a pesky little girl. I would examine the sooty residue left by the butterfly and imagine how it must feel to fly.

####

In the summer of 1940, when I was five years old, I began to explore my environment more, taking longer walks by myself to the apple and peach orchards, and past the red road to the sandy white hill, on to where the pecan groves began lining each side of the road. My grandparent’s farm encompassed four hundred acres of land that my grandmother had inherited from her father, Josh Ellis. Her brothers, Uncle Tom and Uncle Jule were our nearest neighbors, and lived on adjoining land. Their acreage was equal to my grandmother’s and they all lived at least four miles apart.

I was a quiet child, with long, dark plaits, skinny arms and legs, a beautiful brown complexion, and big, dark eyes that Big Mama called muscadine eyes after the firm, dark, sweet berry that grew wild.

I began to wonder about a lot of things. Why were some insects so ugly and others so pretty. My grandmother had shown me how the ugly caterpillar changed into a beautiful butterfly. I had a hard time understanding that metamorphosis and wondered if the ugly soldier bugs ever changed into something pretty.

Noticing the differences in people, I wondered why Big Mama and Papa were both called colored people, even though Big Mama didn’t look colored at all and Papa was more of a deep bronze than a color. I associated colors only with the bright ones such as red, green, blue, yellow and purple, and they didn’t fit any of these descriptions. I wondered why white people, on the rare occasions that we saw any, addressed Big Mama as Anty and Papa as Uncle. We all knew that they were not related. I wondered about other things too. Why was Big Mama so white and Papa so dark? The black people who helped Papa in the fields seemed different from my grandparents. They dipped snuff and chewed tobacco, spitting the ugly dark juice out of their mouths onto the ground or into dirty tin cups. Their lower lips were always bulging with the snuff. I couldn’t even conceive of Big Mama doing that. Although Papa rolled cigarettes using Bull Durham tobacco, he never chewed tobacco or dipped snuff. The farm hands also spoke differently than my family.

Aunt Adele, Uncle Tom’s wife, usually stopped by my grandparent’s house on her way to the mailbox. She often carried a colorful parasol to protect her fair skin from the sun. The only color I could see about Aunt Adele was her deep blue eyes. I enjoyed walking with her the remaining mile or so to the mailbox. She was a chatter box who liked to engage in harmless gossip and prided herself on being outspoken. I learned that Aunt Adele was a good source to get some answers to my many questions.

Aunt Adele, how come Uncle Jule doesn’t raise crops like Papa and Uncle Tom? I asked.

Well, Bay Chile, Jule would rather lie under those old trucks fixing on them all day and moonshine at his still all night than till the soil, Aunt Adele replied.

What is a still and how does he shine the moon? I asked, puzzled.

Now, Bay Chile, a still is like a little old stove for making corn liquor. The corn liquor is called moonshine. Jule drinks plenty of it and sells the rest.

Another day on our way to the mailbox, I asked her why she and my grandmother and my uncles were so white but they were called colored folks. I learned a lot that day.

Bay Chile, lets walk down the road past the mailbox today. Aunt Adele suggested.

But, you didn’t answer my question, I complained.

Maybe I will on our walk.

Soon we came to the big white house that we always passed when we were in Big Mama’s car going to town. I had never gotten up close to it before. Aunt Adele turned to walk up the long tree-lined roadway leading to the house. I was a little uneasy. The house had not been lived in for a long time. The entranceway had ten giant elm trees on each side with their green branches arched into a canopy where they met. The trunk of each tree was whitewashed. The house, once painted white, now was gray. The remaining paint was peeling and the bare boards showed. There was another small house behind it attached by a rickety walkway.

Aunt Adele, why do you want to come here? I was imagining all kinds of ghosts and goblins in that house and was ready to go.

This is the house that Josh Ellis built when he came back from the Civil War. This is where he and your great grandmother Charity lived. Mr. Ellis was a white man and Mama Charity was a quadroon. That’s why their children, your Big Mama, Annie, and her brothers look like they are white. Aunt Adele explained.

Aunt Adele, what is a quadroon? I asked.

You sure have a lot of questions today. A quadroon is a word made up by the white folks to keep track of how much colored blood a person has. A quadroon has one-quarter of black blood and three-quarters of white blood.

But, Aunt Adele, three quarters is more than one quarter, so I think you got it wrong, ‘cause if Mama Charity had three-quarters of the white blood, she would have been white and then Big Mama wouldn’t be colored.

No, Bay, Aunt Adele explained patiently, the white man says one drop of colored blood means that you are colored. That’s why they came up with a way to measure the blood to make sure none of us slips across the line. Colored people with one-half black and one-half white blood are called mulattoes. Then there are those like me and your grandma, Annie. We are octoroons, because we only have one-eighth of colored blood.

By then I was thoroughly confused. What line was she talking about slipping across and who measured the blood and how did they get it to measure. But I was tired of asking questions. I decided that butterflies were a lot less complicated than people.

I didn’t go up close to that old house ever again. But I thought about it many days and dreamed about it some nights. I could see my grandmother and her brothers running through that big old house singing and playing. Weeks Later, I asked Aunt Adele why no one lived in the house any more. She said, "The Georgia Power Company bought it after Mr. Ellis died. Your Uncle Tom was afraid if he didn’t sell it to them, they would take it anyway. Mama Charity went to live with Jule and Laura, but she spent time with all of her children. A poor white family lived there and raised a big family after the Georgia Power Company bought it. They were so poor that they often went to your grandparents for food.

When that poor white family couldn’t pay the rent anymore they were put out and Sis Eleana Moore, and her husband, Big Tommy, moved in with their eight children. Four of them were foster children. Sis Eleana was always taking in children that no one else wanted. After their children grew up and moved away, the house was too big for Eleana and Big Tommy had died, so she went to live with one of her children. The Georgia Power Company didn’t rent it out anymore, claim they got plans to build a dam, and cover this land over with water."

Aunt Adele, why do Uncle Jule and Uncle Tom go by Ingram, when their daddy’s last name was Ellis and why do they call him, Mr. Ellis?

Mama Charity was considered Josh Ellis’ servant by the white folks and they were her children, so they had to take her last name.

I was confused. Grandma Charity had to have been married to Mr. Ellis, and all married ladies changed their names to their husbands, even I knew that. I didn’t believe what she said was true. I would just have to ask Big Mama. I knew she would tell me the truth, even if she thought I was too young, at age five, to ask such grown up questions. I already knew how to read. Big Mama had taught me, so maybe she could explain all of this stuff better than Aunt Adele, I thought.

####

The best time in the country for me was when my brother, Louie, and sister, Evelyn (Honey) came during the summer. Brother—as we called him—was thirteen and Honey ten when I was five years old.

We had open land to roam over that seemed endless. Brother had a red and cream colored bicycle. Honey would sit on the luggage carrier and I would be on the case near the handle bars. While Big Mama was making supper, we would ride up and down the road to the pecan groves, past the apple orchards, and up to the white hill. Honey had a vivid imagination. One evening, after dark, as we were riding she saw a ghost in a long white robe.

Brother, Bay Chile, look over in that field. See that big light and the lady in white with no head coming this way, she cried.

I looked and I saw it. The light was a brilliant orange-red and was moving toward us. I didn’t wait to see the ghost lady with no head. When Brother and Honey got home on the bicycle, I was sitting at the table eating one of Big Mama’s biscuits with pear preserves. Big Mama explained to me that the orange light we saw was swamp gas and the lady with no head was a figment of Honey’s imagination.

Another one of our favorite pastimes was playing the comedian. When we were sent to the spring for water, we would play this game. The spring was about a mile from the house. It was in a heavily wooded area and had a rustic wooden railing around it. An old rusty dipper hung on a small sapling tree right above the spring. We took turns playing comedian, lining up against the railing with our mouths full of water. The one who laughed and spat out the water first was comedian next. We could not hold out long when Brother did his imitation of Uncle Tom, whom he called Ring Tail in his jokes. When we tired of this game, we moved on to riding the trees. Brother would climb a young supple pine tree. Honey and I would help him bend it down and then we would jump on.

We would ride up and down as Brother sang out, hobby hoss Bay Chile, hobby hoss I had read in the Sunday comics about the Katz and Jammer Kids with their toy hobby horse. We could not afford a hobby horse, so my brother made me a far better one out of the pine trees.

As we headed back up the hill from the spring one day, the one thing that we feared most about being in the woods happened. Brother yelled, coach-whip. We looked behind us expecting him to burst out laughing for having tricked us. Then we saw the dreaded coach-whip snake coming at about thirty miles per hour.

You can’t outrun him. Stand still and spread your legs, Brother yelled to us. We did just that, and the coach-whip ran between our legs. We breathed a sigh of relief and walked slowly home, with the coach-whip far ahead of us. It was a widespread belief among the country people that if the coach-whip snake caught you, he would wrap himself around you and stick his fangs up your nose until you stopped breathing.

####

Big Mama was tall for a woman born in the 1870s, at about 5’7". She was not what one would usually describe as beautiful. She was big boned and had what she called a Roman nose. She really had the plain classical features and bearing of an aristocratic person. Her hair, which was a fiery red when she was young had turned black as she aged instead of gray. She wore it pulled back in a bun. A little curl, not of her making and that she probably never noticed, sat at the very top of the bun and bobbed along as she walked. She wore dresses made from coarse fabric as she worked in her gardens. She only took off her high-top shoes when we went to town on Saturdays. Then she put on felt bedroom shoes that were cut out to give her bunions relief. She never got out of the car. Papa took the list and did the grocery shopping while we sat in the car in the colored section of town and watched the people.

Watching the folks on Saturdays was very entertaining and provided much of the material for our comedy routines. The black men from the country gathered on Hodge’s Corner, in Milledgeville, with their guitars and wash boards and played the blues. Others gathered around them to listen. The men and women from the country walked in and out of Hodge’s Grocery Store, where they bought cheese, sardines, crackers, and cold drinks to enjoy as they listened to the musicians.

They had fun unless someone drank too much at the beer garden down the street and a fight broke out, spilling onto Hodge’s Corner. Sometimes it got real ugly and someone would get cut or stabbed. We watched many of the losers run up the stairs to Dr. Boddie’s office with blood streaming from their wounds. We witnessed one woman holding part of her intestines in her hands as she was helped up the stairs. Dr. Boddie always patched them up and in a week or two they would be back on Hodge’s Corner.

####

Big Mama did not talk about anybody. She didn’t visit other people and very seldom went to church. The only times I ever saw her there was when I was baptized at age eleven and when the burial society that my grandfather helped found and served as treasurer, had their annual picnic after church at Mt. Mariah. She visited her sister’s-in-law (aunt Adele and Aunt Laura) who were her nearest neighbors only once in her life—to my knowledge. She believed in helping the poor, the infirm, orphans, and widows, and in all ways being a good Christian. She was kind to animals and strangers and taught me to respect all creatures. A more loving and affectionate person never lived than my grandmother. As she tucked me in at night, she said I was her little duckling and she was my mother duck.

Big Mama and Papa were opposites in many ways. He was dark, she was light. He was outgoing, she was reclusive. She was tall, he was short. But they both were kind and loving. However, Big Mama did not like Papa’s frequent visiting and socializing after church. We would often hear her say to no one in particular, Home is a curse to Tom Butts. Seldom visits and short stays make long friends. You have to feed people out of long handle spoons.

One Sunday, Big Mama decided to give Papa a dose of his own medicine. She left the cook pots cold and went visiting. Papa had already gone across the creek to visit some of the families that worked in the fields with him. Big Mama and I went to visit Uncle Jule and Aunt Laura. The long walk was exhausting for Big Mama, and her bunions were hurting. Aunt Laura was sitting in a swing on the front porch when we arrived. She invited us to have a seat but it was hard to accept. Every chair and the rest of the swing was covered with chicken shit or dog poop. Animals wandered in and out of the house at will. I peered in the house, about to ask for a glass of cool water but changed my mind. Flies were everywhere.

Aunt Laura always said if people don’t like my mess, they don’t have to come in.

Big Mama was still determined to teach Papa a lesson. So the next Sunday we walked over to Uncle Tom and Aunt Adele’s. Big Mama had to stop twice to rest.

Uncle Tom had a surefire plan to keep people away from his house which sat in the middle of a cow pasture. About a quarter of a mile before reaching his house, it was necessary to open a gate to a barb-wire fenced pasture and walk that last quarter mile fenced in with the cows and bulls.

Although I had made the walk before, I was scared to death. I thought that I could outrun the bulls but I knew that Big Mama couldn’t and I would never leave her. We arrived safely. Aunt Adele invited us in to her spotless house. She offered us a cool glass of lemonade and cookies. After a nice chat with Aunt Adele, Big Mama and I made our way back home. Big Mama was sure Papa would be annoyed by her absence, but to her chagrin he paid no attention to our excursions, so Big Mama never went visiting again except to visit my

mother when we went to town on Saturdays.

####

Papa taught us the difference between poisonous and nonpoisonous snakes and how to identify each. The rattlesnake and the water moccasins were deadly and to be avoided at all costs. The king snake was our friend as it ate other snakes. If a king snake came around the house, Papa would pick it up at the back of its head and release it back into the woods.

Big Mama took care of the rattlesnakes that came too close to the house. She would cut them in two with a double barreled shotgun that she always kept loaded and nearby. One rattlesnake became quite fond of the eggs in one of the hen nests and would beat Big Mama to them. She found the snake in the nest one day and waited until he swallowed an egg. And before he could crush it, she shot him in half. Big Mama, Honey, and I watched the yellow egg yolk and rust and black diamond rattlesnake all slither together from the nest to the floor of the hen house. We children liked to take a stick and poke the dead rattlesnake to watch its tail wiggle which couldn’t die until the sun went down, according to folklore.

Papa was a real hard worker. He worked from sunup until sundown. He couldn’t tolerate laziness in anyone, least of all in himself. He would say, If there was a lazy bone in my body, I would take a knife and cut it out.

When he wasn’t working in the fields, he was mending fences or tending to the livestock. No matter how hard Papa worked, sometimes the crops would not produce. He did not have the technology to irrigate the fields and the plantation owners, many years before his time, had depleted the soil with the continuous planting of cotton on the same land.

After several seasons of planting in the same place, the land would become barren. The fields kept moving closer and closer to the house as Papa searched for new ground on which to plant, destroying the natural beauty of the land where grass and beautiful wildflowers once grew. The meadows where I had watched the cottontails play—jumping across each other’s backs on warm summer evenings—became fields of corn or cotton. Despite Papa’s rotation of the crops, in the summer of 1941 nothing grew. Papa was desperate and after some tips from Uncle Jule, he decided to set up a whiskey still of his own in order to make ends meet.

Operating a whiskey still was, of course, illegal. People who engaged in this enterprise were always on the look-out for government agents, called revenooers or white shirts by people who operated stills.

One day, after becoming bored with playing jacks by myself, I went alone for a walk. When I reached the pecan groves, I saw a white man wearing a clean white shirt, dark trousers, and black dress shoes heading my way. When he approached me, he smiled and said, My, my, what a pretty little girl. What’s your name?

I smiled back and said Emily, but my nickname is Bay Chile.

The man said, Yeah? Well, a pretty little girl like you should have a prettier nickname. If you were my little girl, I would call you Sunflower. Where do you live little Sunflower?

Down the road a piece. I answered shyly with my eyes averted.

Is Tom Butts your grandpappy? The man asked, still smiling.

Yes, sir, I replied.

He told me that his name was Clair and that he was a friend of my grandfather. He made me feel very special. Not many grown men would take time to talk to a little girl, I thought. It was the gentle sound of his voice and the way he looked at me as though we were friends or confidantes."

Maybe you could do me a favor and point out which direction to his still.

I pointed to my left and past the triangular area that we called the well-cut due to its natural beauty. The man took off in a hurry, without even thanking me, and I headed home.

About an hour later, he and Papa came home together. White Shirt said, Old man, you are going to Reedville Federal Penitentiary.

Papa looked down and said in an humble voice, Give me time to wash around my neck and change my clothes.

White Shirt sat down on the edge of the porch to wait for Papa to come out. The next thing I knew, Big Mama came out with her double barreled shotgun and announced to White Shirt, who was a revenooer man, that Tom Butts wasn’t going anywhere.

She added, I have the same blood running in my veins as you have and you best get off my land right now.

That was the last we saw of White Shirt. Papa tore his still down and I was so ashamed that I never told anyone that I had turned Papa in to the revenooer.

Big Mama was a Christian woman but she was no pansy. She protected her family from all manner of critters.

Papa was a strong black man. He loved his wife and family and I felt that he could protect us from anything. After the incident with White Shirt, if the crops failed, Big Mama would get the bank book from her black purse and tell Papa how much money to withdraw from the inheritance left to her by her father, Josh Ellis. Papa seemed to get a little shorter every time he had to take Big Mama’s bank book to town.

####

In September of 1941, I would have to leave Big Mama and Papa to join my family in Milledgeville so I could start attending school. I did not want to go and Big Mama didn’t want me to leave her. We came up with all kinds of schemes for me to stay on with my grandparents. Big Mama told me one day, I’m going to sell out lock, stock, and barrel and move on past Milledgeville to Macon. They have better schools in Macon.

I fantasized for a while about driving right on through Milledgeville in Big Mama’s shiny new Dodge, waving at my other family members as we drove by. But even as a six-year old, I realized that Big Mama would never leave the country. Her love for the land was linked to her love for and loyalty to her father.

I hadn’t forgotten my pledge to ask Big Mama about Mama Charity and Josh Ellis. I had to do it before I left for school. One day when we were alone near the end of the summer, she mentioned something about sitting on Mr. Ellis’s lap and playing with his beard when she was a young child.

I asked innocently, Who was Mr. Ellis?

My daddy, she replied.

Why don’t you call him daddy or papa? I asked.

We had to call him Mr. Ellis to protect ourselves, she explained.

Protect yourselves from what? I asked, getting excited now.

From white folks. She said in a hushed tone of voice.

Did Mama Charity call him Mr. Ellis, too?

Yes, whenever other people were around she called him mister.

Why would she have to call her husband mister? They were married, weren’t they, Big Mama?

No. White folks and colored folks aren’t allowed to marry in the South.

Then how did they have you, Uncle Tom, and Uncle Jule? I persisted.

You told me that people can’t have children unless they are married.

I didn’t notice how distraught she was becoming until I saw tears well up in her eyes. She hung her proud head and whispered, I am an illegitimate child.

I didn’t know what that meant but I felt it was something bad, by the way she looked so ashamed when she said it. I knew Big Mama could never be bad. I put my little arms around her and we cried together, accepting the sins of the white man as our own.

After she had regained her composure, she explained to me that only she, Uncle Tom and Uncle Jule were whole brothers and sister.

The others, Uncle Joe, Aunt Katie, Aunt Gertrude, and Aunt Sallie were half brother and sisters.

Although the only one I consider as half is Sallie because we had different mothers. I will explain the whole thing to you when you are old enough to understand, Big Mama said, bringing the conversation to a close.

I learned far more than I needed to know. I felt lower than a snake’s belly for asking so many questions that I had made Big Mama cry. Anyway, I didn’t understand much of what she told me. How could people be half, I wondered. It was bad enough the white folks measured our blood to divide us up. Now sisters and brothers were being halved up, I thought, as I pondered all that she had told me. They all looked whole to me but the next time I saw Aunt Sallie, I looked her over real good to see if I could find the seams where the two halves must have been sewn back together.

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Many years later, when I was in my junior year of high school, I was alone with Big Mama when she suddenly said to me, I promised a long time ago that I would tell you about Mama Charity and Mr. Ellis. I think you are old enough now to understand but I have to start with Mama Charity’s mama, Ansacka, in order for you to fully understand.

Chapter 2

Ansacka

Milledgeville was chosen as the capital of Georgia because of its central location and water supply. Following the pattern of Washington, D.C., Milledgeville was designed as a capital city, with four public squares, and the remaining streets laid out in a checkerboard style. The city was named for John Milledge, who was the governor of Georgia between 1802 and 1806. Visitors to Milledgeville were duly impressed by the magnificent Governor’s Mansion, Capitol Building, and the large antebellum mansions. Penitentiary Square housed the state prison, and another public square was used for slave auctions.

Plantation owners came from all over Georgia to purchase slaves from the auction block. Some of the wealthiest plantation owners in the south lived in Hancock and Baldwin Counties, just outside of Milledgeville. Baldwin County served as the county seat of Milledgeville, and was named for Abraham Baldwin who was a Savannah lawyer and U. S. Senator between 1799 and 1807. He was also one of the original signers of the U.S. Constitution.

The plantation owners waited impatiently in the hot Georgia sun for the auction to begin. Among them was, Lafayette Ingram, who owned a plantation in Hancock County. He was eager to purchase a slave or two to replace some of his existing stock who were getting too old to produce as they had in the past. He had started his plantation with five slaves inherited from his father. After taking on a partner, William Fraley, he was able to expand his slave population to fifty over the next ten years.

A large number of slaves had been brought in for auction this day, and as they were brought out onto the platform, one in particular caught Lafayette’s eye. She was a pretty girl, appearing to be about eighteen, light-skinned, with long dark hair in braids. Lafayette quickly reviewed the bill of sale that accompanied her and learned that she had experience as a cook. A lot of men gathered around to examine her when the bidding started, pawing her breasts and demanding that she open